Kern-Ralph Co-lab 

Andrew Kern is an academic expert in population genetics, evolutionary biology, machine learning, computational biology, and genomics. His research combines modern machine learning methods with classical probabilistic approaches and large-scale simulation to gain insight into population genetic and evolutionary biological questions. His lab focuses on methods development, creating new tools that empower the field to gain insights that weren’t attainable previously. One fundamental thread that has run through his entire research career is understanding the impact of natural selection on genetic variation in natural populations including models such as humans, mosquitos, and fruit flies as well as non-model systems such as barnacles and octopuses.   

Recent Media: 
The earliest known animal sex chromosome is 480 million years old (Scientific American, Sept. 3, 2024)
Oldest known sex chromosome emerged 248 million years ago in an octopus ancestor (Live Science, March 8, 2024)
Earliest known sex chromosomes evolved in octopuses (New Scientist, March 5, 2024) 
Oldest known animal sex chromosome evolved in octopuses 380 million years ago (Nature, March 4, 2024) 
UO researcher uses evolutionary science to combat malaria (Around the O, April 22, 2019) 
Artificial intelligence finds ancient ‘ghosts’ in modern DNA (Quanta Magazine, Feb. 7, 2019) 
Theorists debate how ‘neutral’ evolution really is (Quanta Magazine, Nov. 8, 2018)